Yeah, I know: we're fewer than one-hundred songs into the countdown, and already I've listed three Black Crowes records. The other two were covers, though, and this one's an original. How's that justification--you buy it? Yeah, me neither. The Black Crowes are the greatest Southern rock band, bar none, of the past twenty years. Sure, their instrumentalists aren't as talented as those in the Allman Brothers Band (few are), and their songwriting isn't on a par with Lynyrd Skynyrd's (few are), but both those bands--in their greatest incarnations--crashed and burned (sorry 'bout the pun, Ronnie and Duane) years ago.
The Black Crowes came flying out of their cage with an exciting debut album full of great rock songs with a bluesy feel. Their sophomore stint proved that they'd improved exponentially, as they expanded their sound and their breadth, drawing as deep into the Southern Gothic well as anyone had since Van Zant's plane went down in a Mississippi forest. The album--fifteen years later, and they still haven't come close to matching it's quality--sunk on the sales chart, and ever since the Crowes have had difficulty sustaining an album-length identity, jumping back-and-forth among straight-up rock and unfocused jam-band nonsense.
This year, though, with their new album Warpaint, the Crowes have come closer than ever to matching their long-playing creative zenith of 1993. The album's a quieter affair than any other Crowes' record, adopting more of a folk/country sound than before. Yeah, I know, they're still trying to find themselves, but this album works well as a whole; it's cohesive. Chris Robinson's vocals--which have always been distinctive, and much-more-often-than-not, have been among the best rock has had to offer--have improved with age, and the quieter moods suit him well.
But we're here to talk about individual records, aren't we? Not entire albums (is the LP even relevant anymore? Yeah, but barely), which is all I've discussed so far. But you see, as you noted before, this is my third Crowes song, and...there won't be anymore--not on this list anyway (but wait, oh just wait, till--in 2010--I start on my '90s list. I'm going to at least double the number of Crowes entries to put on that list); so, I decided to talk at length (at length being relative to my usual one/two-paragraph meagre posts) about one of my favorite (and one of the best, though favorite and best are not always mutually exclusive) bands 'cause after this post, I won't be talkin' 'bout them no mo'.
Anyway...speaking of quieter moods, "Locust Street" finds the Crowes relaxed and contemplative, singing about loneliness and broken hearts and the embracing, redemptive power of music, all in the midst of an honest-to-goodness country song: not alt-country, not folk-country, not current Music Row country, but traditional country in every single way--the structure, the tone, the instrumentation, and even the singing. Well, maybe not the singing--not completely; Robinson's singing is more Southern here than it is country: he sports his country twang proudly, but he lets his frayed vibratto hang loose, which is a Southern soul (think of the Stax/Volt vault of singers as opposed to their Motown cousins up in Detroit) soul vocal technique. In fact, it's this mixture of Southern soul and country twang--and British blooze rock blustery belting--that gives Robinson his unique sound.
Speaking of sound, maybe the production's not typical, traditional country, either, 'cause traditional country songs were much tighter, much more compressed than this one is. So--maybe it's not completely a traditional country song, but it'd be close enough for Gram Parsons (who pioneered this type of Donnie & Marie--do I have to explain that analogy? I didn't think so--country music, but who never wrote a song this good nor had a voice that could come close to touching Robinson's, and it was Parsons's vocals--and hippie lifestyle--that proved his commercial failure in Nashville), and does genre really matter anyway? Well, yes it does, at least in terms of commercial viability; but in terms of quality, genre be damned, a great song's a great song, and sometimes what makes a record great is when it indeed tries to damn genres, or when it does so whether or not trying is part of the process.
Now, I don't believe the Crowes were purposefully trying to write a cross-genre country song here; they're probably settling down into an older age (I still refuse to believe that I--at thirty-seven--am now a middle-aged man, so I hesitate to brand my contemporaries with that moniker) and writing and recording songs for a slower lifestyle, a lifestyle given more to pondering than partying. They're writing songs now more for themselves than they were before, and in delving into more personal feelings about life and love and the continuation of both and the problems that lie therein, they've grown more universal in their message, much as the Band used to do in their prime.
This transference of the personal to the universal reminds me of a scene from the John Lennon documentary Imagine. John and Yoko are walking through Central Park, and a fan comes gushing, telling Lennon about how he just knew that Lennon was speaking directly to him in one of his songs (I think the song was "Imagine," but I could be wrong, and I haven't seen the film in years), and how did Lennon know about him, how could he be so prescient as to see right through to the soul of this guy and his problems. Lennon lets the fellow down easy, telling him that he--Lennon--wrote the song not about this dude, but about himself (or people in general, I forget), that he appreciated the compliments, but, no, that song was not about that dude.
I felt a bit sorry for the fan (though he did seem something of an imbecile--either that, or he was stoned--or [shudder] both), for I think I knew from whence he came: music--and it doesn't even have to be great music, not really--can reach out to us, envelop us, and sometimes we like the tune or the sound or the singer's voice, and we return the embrace, and we call the music our own; it asks--sometimes it demands, sometimes it begs, and sometimes it just gestures--to be possessed, and we possess it. We invite it in and give it it's own room and bed in our head. And now, we have a friend. We have family. We're not alone anymore. The Black Crowes understand this concept, and they call it "Locust Street," the empty space in everyone's soul, the place where we all sleep alone, where it's so quiet that we can hear only the sounds of that titular insect that sheds it's carapace and leaves the empty shell behind. What fills the void? What occupies the space? Music. Chris Robinson sings:
Just a glimpse of what love could beOnce a dream that I owned
One of many lonely longing souls
At least I'm not alone
Well at least I'm not alone
And as long as The Black Crowes keep playing this song, and we keep playing the record of The Black Crowes playing this song, then we're not alone anymore...at least not for the moment.
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